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Stronger at the Broken Places

You probably didn’t log on to this website to read about yoga, but trust me, there’s a connection between the subject at hand, and the theme of this blog, and that, in fact, is the point of this post, and the point of Yoga: Connection.

Don’t settle for contact; go for connection! Much of what motivates us to go on-line has to do with a desire for personal contact. While there’s nothing wrong with making contact with others through electronic media, contact alone isn’t sufficient to fulfill our need for meaningful connection.

To heal means “to make whole” and unless we come to terms with our brokenness, we can’t experience ourselves as whole. When we regain the experience of wholeness we become more able to trust the validity of our own experience even when others opinions contradict it.

Many couples have concluded that arguing and fighting is painful, that it’s better to avoid acknowledging differences at all, and have co-created agreements (sometimes unspoken or even unconscious) to ignore or deny the presence of differences that could potentially activate hard or hurt feelings.

In our previous blog we addressed the concept of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and the dangers of being possessed by this insidious condition. In this posting we are offering ten valuable practices that are guaranteed to help to free you from the grip of FOMO and to enhance the quality of your relationships as well as the overall quality of well-being in your life.

FOMO frequently provokes feelings of anxiety and restlessness, often generated by competitive thoughts that others are experiencing more pleasure, success, or fulfillment in their lives than they are. It can also be a response to a conscious or unconscious fear of aging and/or dying.

There are an infinite variety of strategies for winning an argument, but there are only a few motives that drive the compulsion to win. The most prevalent one is the desire to avoid an anticipated humiliation, punishment, or loss of power by defeating the other person and thus affirming a dominant position in the relationship.

It may sound strange coming from someone who has written dozens of blogs about happiness and taught a lot of seminars on the subject, to hear that happiness isn’t necessarily all that it’s cracked up to be.

"It was", she told us, "the feelings of loneliness, shame, and isolation that I lived with daily that made my life so painful. As much as I knew that my parents loved me, their enslavement to drugs made it impossible for them to provide for my most basic needs or even their own for that matter."

Some people get tossed around by life changes that can affect them for weeks, months, or even years. Others may recover more quickly and use the crisis to prompt growth and the opening of new possibilities in their lives. These people are the ones who have cultivated the quality of resilience.

Driven by both his love of music and his love for his mother, Anthony dedicated himself to fulfilling his vision of being a professional singer; not simply someone who could earn a living by singing, but someone who would become one of the most beloved performers in the world, whose voice was immediately recognizable and adored by millions...

Relationships provide us with an unending series of opportunities to recognize and begin to detach from unskillful beliefs and practices that may be contributing to, rather than alleviating some of the suffering in our lives.

One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is in demonstrating a happy marriage. More than anything else we can do for them, this example supports and encourages the possibility of creating such a relationship in their own lives.

There may be no better way to enhance the quality of your relationships than by becoming more emotionally intelligent, and the quality of your relationships, with yourself and others, may be the most significant variable in that process!

Some of us are inclined to focus our attention on our partner, sometimes to the point at which we lose ourselves in the process, often resulting in neglecting essential needs and concerns that require our attention.

Both excessive risk as well as insufficient challenge and stimulation can be relationship-killers. Get on top of things and stay on top of them by looking at how things are going for you, your partner, and your relationship.

You may have been the one who was unable to get your partner to talk or maybe you’ve experienced being felt pressured to open up and talk about your feelings, when the only feelings that you had were to “Leave me alone!!” Either way, you’re not alone.

A willingness to address a potentially relationship-busting condition doesn't guarantee that the marriage will be saved, only that there is at least a chance that it might be. When destructive patterns are repeatedly played out without a committed effort on both partners' parts to address them, the prognosis becomes very poor.

We often hear people say that they don’t have enough time to talk anymore. A more honest response would be something like: “The last thing that I want to talk about is my feelings or hear about yours.”

His journey demanded far more of him physically, spiritually, and emotionally than he ever expected it would, far more perhaps than he might have initially believed he had in him. And it rewarded him with infinitely more than he could have imagined he would gain from his efforts.

It seems that just as things seem to get really bad, another angel shows up; sometimes in a wheel chair, sometimes not, but always with a reminder of what I'm blessed to have in my life, and a reminder that things can and do change, and sometimes that change is for the good.

When we are no longer afraid to face ourselves or be clearly seen by others, we can finally be free. Freedom means that I am no longer a slave to the need for external acceptance or others’ approval, and that I can live with integrity and open-heartedness.

Forgiveness, as many of us have come to know is not given exclusively for the benefit of the forgiven, but for the benefit of the forgiver. Letting go of a grievance or past injury doesn’t just help to alleviate the other’s guilt, but the offering of forgiveness is itself redemptive in that it relieves the giver of the emotional weight of that resentment.